


We Were Born to Fall

by mytimehaspassed



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Boarding School, Drug Dealing, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Minor Character Death, Recreational Drug Use, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-30
Updated: 2014-09-30
Packaged: 2018-02-19 07:56:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2380715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mytimehaspassed/pseuds/mytimehaspassed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frank doesn’t say goodbye when he drops Ian off at the entrance to the building.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Were Born to Fall

**WE WERE BORN TO FALL**  
SHAMELESS  
Ian/Mickey; Ian/Kash; Ian/OMC(s)  
 **WARNINGS** : Suicide attempt; mentions of suicide; drug usage and drug dealing; underage sex  
 **NOTES** : thenjw requested a Boarding School!AU and then it turned into this little angstfest. Sorry, bb!

  
Frank doesn’t say goodbye when he drops Ian off at the entrance to the building. He makes some remark about not dropping the soap in the shower, showing off a shadowy smirk, his hand fluttering in the space between them, his hand quivering with the need for a drink, and he tells him to try out for a few of the sports teams, and he tells him to stay out of trouble for fuck’s sake, the distaste curling around his mouth like a comma, but he never actually says the word goodbye.

He had slipped a bottle of Jack into Ian’s coat pocket before they left the car, a little token of forgiveness or something close to it, and Ian pulls it out now as he watches Frank leave, unscrewing the top and placing it to his lips, wincing at the taste on his tongue. He hefts his bag over his shoulder and starts for the door, watches as the headmaster steps out of the dark cavern of space to meet him, smiling brightly when Ian holds out his hand to shake, his palm warm and surprisingly strong.

He introduces himself as Headmaster Ball – and really, Ian thinks, really? – telling Ian that he has made an excellent choice in Bellingham (the word choice sounding strange even to him, his voice faltering for a second, and Ian tries to swallow the lie but finds that he can’t) and that he truly believes Ian will find a home here among all the other pupils. And that, here he smiles slyly, placing a hand on Ian’s shoulder, his fingers like claws, he certainly hopes Mr. Gallagher would be proud of what the staff has made of the new science wing.

(Frank had called it a donation, Ian had called it a bribe, and Fiona had looked at both of them with swollen, stern eyes and asked them who gave a fuck what it was called if Ian got to start over like nothing ever happened.)

Ian wants to say that Frank would like the addition better if it was a bar, but decides against it, swallowing down the bitter sarcasm and letting the headmaster lead him inside. Almost immediately, Ian is struck by the sheer size of the school, the shiny mahogany paneling and cold marble floors, the thick forest green curtains shrouding each window, the light that shines through and gathers on the floor in warm, inviting pools. The headmaster takes him down one long hallway and then another, throwing his hand to each dusty class photograph, mentioning a few of the celebrity names that can be found tiny and inconsequential in years ’52 through ’79.

They pass by trophies and medals and banners and finally come to the headmaster’s office, another large room flanked by what must be the staff lounge and mailroom. The headmaster gestures to the chair in front of his desk and Ian sits obediently, placing his bag gently on the floor, curling in on himself, trying to look small, shorn, submissive. He looks at the headmaster and the headmaster looks at him and finally, after one long beat of silence, the headmaster sighs and reaches into his desk for a pack of cigarettes, taking one out and lighting it.

“I used to know your father in Chicago,” he says, taking Ian by surprise, the smoke thick in the wide space of the office. “He was an asshole.”

“Um,” Ian says, biting his lip.

“That’s okay,” the headmaster says, “You don’t need to stick up for him, everyone knew he was an asshole.”

Ian shrugs, wistfully hoping for the drink in his pocket, the rough burn of it climbing down his throat. “He is an asshole, I guess.”

The headmaster takes another cigarette out of the pack and hands it to Ian, lights it with one cupped hand close to Ian’s cheek. “We used to be drinking buddies, him and me. Down at the Alibi for hours, fuck, days even, after the plant closed down and there was nothing else to do. Frank would tell a lot of stories about his family, about all you kids. What are there, like seven of you?” He takes a drag, lets it out like a long, white exhale escaping his mouth, doesn’t let Ian reply. “We definitely had some good times. Though, that was a long time ago, way before I moved out here, way before your father owned the company he owns now. I’m six years sober, you know, this May.”

“Congratulations,” Ian says numbly, coughing on his cigarette.

The headmaster stares at him for a while, his face still, solid, blank. “Frank did a lot of crazy shit back in those days. Wasn’t home much, right? He would always tell us stories about your crazy mother, about how he couldn’t stand to be around her, especially when she was on one of her downswings.” He doesn’t look away from Ian, his eyes cold. “You know, he used to hope and pray that none of his children would ever turn out like her. I guess he never counted on genetics being that strong, huh?”

Ian swallows, tears stinging his eyes so fiercely that it shocks him. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t move.

The headmaster smokes his cigarette down to the filter. “This is the last stop before prison, Ian. All the boys here have done something wrong in their lives, but they’re owning up to it, they’re finding better ways to solve problems.” He plucks Ian’s forgotten cigarette from his mouth, smashing it in the ashtray beside his coffee cup. “They’re growing up.”

He looks away once and then looks back at Ian. “You need to grow up, Ian. You need to become a better man, and if you can’t do that here, then you will never be able to do it.” The headmaster places his hands on the desk in front of him and Ian can’t look away, traces the expanse of his fingers, his wrists, burns the memory of his wedding ring into his mind. “You think you can put what happened behind you? You think you can grow up, too, Ian?”

Ian looks up at him, his eyes wet, and nods once and then again. “Yes,” he says, and his voice is a whisper.

***

On the way to Ian’s room, Headmaster Ball passes him off to a boy who looks unhappy to have been taken away from his stolen cigarette in the lower level bathroom. The boy looks at the headmaster almost entirely without shame, uncaring that he was caught, and then turns his glum expression on Ian when the headmaster walks away, says, “Did you have to walk in here? Those were fucking Parliaments, man.”

(The headmaster hadn’t even thrown away the pack, instead tucking the cigarettes into his shirt pocket in full view of the two other boys, and Ian had raised an eyebrow, but he had only turned away.)

“Sorry,” Ian shrugs, not even remotely apologetic. His face is scrubbed raw, a fast pass with his palms over his eyes once the headmaster had turned away, and he wants so badly to drink right now, to do nothing but drink and light a blunt and forget for a while. He pulls the Jack from his pocket. “Do you want some of this instead?”

The boy’s eyes widen comically and he looks around for a brief second before snatching the whiskey from Ian’s hand. He swallows one, two, three greedy mouthfuls before handing it back, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “I would definitely hide that, if I were you. Our rooms are searched for contraband like once a week.”

Ian shrugs again. “My dad has given me a bottle every Christmas since I was nine, so there’s more where that came from.”

The boy looks at him strangely, his eyebrows furrowing, his voice rough from the burn of the alcohol down his throat. “What the fuck is wrong with your dad?”

Ian sighs. “How much time do you have?”

***

The boy’s name is Mickey, and, he tells Ian, his grin sliding slow across his face, he’s at Bellingham because he set fire to the gym of his old school.

They take the long route, Mickey showing him some of his favorite places, simple, elegantly-designed rooms that can be converted into bars or poker tables or – once – a brothel, all with a lock, a secret password, and a few quick changes of the layout. He tells Ian the times of the day that Headmaster Ball is otherwise occupied, tells him the on-going plans for monthly parties, tells him what stores in town look the other way when the students try to buy alcohol.

Mickey shows Ian Mickey’s own room, shows him the rooms of some of his friends, before finally reaching Ian’s, a blessed single that Ian only received because Frank had slid another couple thousand dollars under the table, winking obscenely at Headmaster Ball, mumbling something about letting the kid have his fun. Mickey walks in and looks around quickly, fingers some of the belongings Frank had sent ahead of Ian to be set up upon his arrival, the new laptop, the old stereo, Ian’s record collection large and obscure and packed in unassuming crates.

“Wow,” Mickey says, flipping through some of the albums. “So you’re like a hipster or something?”

“Or something,” Ian says, and then asks Mickey why he burned down the gym.

Mickey shrugs and says why not, going from the albums to pick up the bottle of Jack again, taking a few more swigs before hopping onto the bed enthusiastically, his legs hanging off the edge. Ian walks over and sits next to him carefully, not close enough to touch.

(The story goes: Mickey set fire to the gym because he couldn’t burn down the whole school, because he was too drunk and too stoned and too angry to do anything but sit down on the grass outside and watch the fire light, watch the fire catch, watch it dance inside the building from towels to clothes to the asbestos-infested gym mats. This was where he had had his first kiss and he thought it apt, thought it apropos, that the fire that consumed him had taken the whole building down with it.

Being underage, and fervently defended by his well-meaning, yet vastly overwhelmed public defender, he only received seven months community service and a justified expulsion and, later, a one-way bus ticket to Bellingham from his dad.)

Mickey was sent here on a scholarship, one of the tiny percentage of low-income students Bellingham allows to attend in order to keep their government grant, and he wears it as proudly as his dark tattoos. He separates himself from the rich kids with pleasure, talking of their white-collar crimes with little respect. “Everyone here has been kicked out of all the other schools, but most of that is because of drugs and alcohol and stupid, petty shit,” he says, rolling his eyes.

He stops and then looks at Ian, “Why are you here?”

Ian has been waiting for this the day that Frank had told him to pack his bags, has been working lies over and over in his head, using words that sound believable, using words that could be the truth, but when Mickey turns to him, his mouth open and waiting and looking deliciously tempting, Ian forgets what he’s prepared, forgets everything except for what actually happened, and he can’t, he can’t say anything, forgets how to form words, and it’s right there, right on the tip of his tongue, so instead of saying that, he surges forward, his mouth on Mickey’s quick and vicious enough to draw blood.

He pulses once, his mouth hungry and swollen and warm, his tongue licking Mickey’s lips, and Mickey doesn’t move, doesn’t kiss back, is so still that it must hurt, so Ian finally pulls away and says, “Fuck. Shit. Fuck, sorry.”

Mickey looks at him blankly, something strange rippling across him, before he tosses the bottle on the floor and wraps both hands around Ian’s face, drawing him close enough that Ian’s not sure where he stops and Mickey begins, Mickey kissing and biting and licking and Ian pushing forward for more, moving closer and closer. It’s short work to undress themselves, and Ian lays claim to every part of Mickey, leaving bruises with his fingers, leaving red marks with his mouth, and Mickey leans back and takes it all, the sharp bite of Ian’s teeth on the edge of a letter there, the swirl of his tongue on the knob of his spine. Ian breathes him in, his hands curling around Mickey’s waist, and there’s a brief struggle over logistics on such a small bed, but they make it work, Ian reaching around to palm Mickey’s chest, just above where his heart is beating, and Mickey leaning back against him, rocking with Ian’s movements, and they’re both right there, flush against each other, and Ian places his mouth on Mickey’s neck, wet, and doesn’t say anything when he comes.

Afterwards, when Mickey’s dug another pack of cigarettes out of his clothes, he lights one and hands it to Ian, who takes a drag and coughs valiantly, sticking up his middle finger when Mickey calls him a pussy. They smoke and don’t say anything, the silence in the room warm and appeasing, until Mickey breaks it once, only to say, “You could have just said you didn’t want to talk about it.”

Ian turns and looks at him, unflinching, until Mickey closes his eyes.

***

Because school had already started for the year, Ian joins his classes with long lists of books to read and assignments to finish so he can catch up. Frank had picked all of his classes for him, had given him the form to sign when Ian was still in the hospital (had forged his signature when Ian found that he couldn’t hold a pen), so Ian is as surprised as his teachers when he brings no aptitude to any subject, no desire, no skills.

His French teacher is a beautiful woman who wears low cut shirts and even shorter skirts, crossing and uncrossing her brown legs within the gaze of the entire front row, the boys hanging on to her every word. Mickey is in that class, too, and he sits down beside Ian effortlessly on the first day, never mentioning the time they met, never sneaking sly glances at Ian’s lips, his hands, his chest, pretending that nothing ever happened. Ian had wanted to say something, had wanted to ask if they could maybe do it again sometime, but stopped himself when Mickey had looked up at him as if he were a stranger.

It’s hard, French, but so is Advanced Geometry and World History and Comparative Literature and Latin. Ian makes it through the first day and then the second and then the third week and then farther than that, rising into his second month without gaining much traction, floundering at times, stressed, staying up nights drinking by himself, reminiscent of his father, reminiscent of last November. He studies and he goes to class and he reads books Lip sends him from college and he keeps to himself mostly, not really getting to know the other boys, not really getting to know anyone.

He lives alone and he hardly feels anything and he likes it, likes that he’s almost keeping to Frank’s word, almost staying out of trouble, likes that he no longer has any distractions. Likes that he can barely remember the look on Kash’s face when he found him that day, likes that everything that happened is only a memory now, half buried and almost entirely forgotten.

***

In French one afternoon, Mickey leans over to Ian, right as Mrs. Fisher lifts the chalk up to the board, her shirt riding up of its own accord, most of the boys hunching forward for a glimpse of that taut stomach underneath, and tells him that they’re having a party later after school and that Ian should maybe join them or something, since he doesn’t know that many people.

“Where is it,” Ian whispers as Mrs. Fisher underlines nouns and verb conjugation on the board, her back to the class.

Mickey opens his mouth to say something, but then thinks better of it, pulling out a piece of lined paper and drawing wide, arcing pencil marks over it, turning it this way and that, before finally handing it over. Ian looks down and it’s a map, not crudely drawn like Ian was expecting, but full of shadows and light and three-dimensional objects, full of depth and character, the burn marks on the hallway carpet, the lifelike lion’s head statue on the third floor landing, the indentations in the stone walls lining the courtyard.

“Wow,” Ian says, and the corner of Mickey’s mouth lifts into a smile.

***

The party, which everyone keeps reiterating is far from over (yelling this loudly over the thumping bass of the stereo system, drinks sloshing up and over the rims of cups and on to the concrete floor), is juvenile and clearly funded by one of the rich kids, a keg tapped in the corner and a ridiculously large tray of pot brownies and a thousand red Solo cups. It’s being held in one of the many half-forgotten basement rooms and Ian had to climb through the remnants of a short, square wooden door behind the tool shed to find it, past moldy textbooks and broken lamps and useless rotary-dial phones, past the sketches from Mickey’s map, sneezing a few times before he finally – literally – stumbles into it, bumping into one of the boys from his Sociology class. He apologizes, but the boy looks at him with glassy eyes, throwing a hand up, shrugging.

“It’s cool, man,” he says, and blinks slowly enough that Ian wants to ask if he’s really okay. He turns away again, his movements liquid, sluggish.

Ian makes a beeline for the keg, the table filled with liquor bottles next to it, and starts fixing something strong enough to blind him and maybe three other people. There’s little tequila left, but most of a bottle of vodka, so he upends both into one of the cups he finds. There’s also whiskey and – surprisingly – schnapps so Ian adds those, as well.

“Take it easy there,” a voice says behind him, and Ian turns around to find Mickey, smiling sweetly and nursing a cup of something foul-smelling.

“I’m thirsty,” Ian says, and then laughs, because it sounds ridiculous even to him. He takes a few sips, takes a few more, doesn’t stop until he can feel the first wave flow through him, the buzz in his blood.

“Well save some for the rest of us, at least,” Mickey says, his teeth bright in the makeshift lighting.

“I thought this was Christian’s party, can’t he afford a few bottles of alcohol?”

“Sure,” Mickey says, and slides closer to Ian, his breath tickling Ian’s chin. “But the party’s been going on for a while and the narcs are bound to break it up in about twenty minutes, so this is all we’re going to get tonight.”

Ian grins and downs what’s left in his glass. He takes the rest of the Ketel One and unscrews the cap, places his mouth over the rim. “I guess we better hide the evidence, then.”

Mickey laughs, surprised, and then takes a bottle from the table, as well. As he reaches for it, his arm touches Ian’s chest, sliding smooth over his skin. “I guess so,” he says, and Ian leans closer.

***

They fuck again that night, Mickey leaving early enough in the morning that Ian only turns over in the bleak light, watching him go through blurry, blood-shot eyes. Ian doesn’t tell him that he’s awake and Mickey doesn’t say goodbye and neither of them mention it in French when they see each other again, the bout of hangovers evident enough that Mrs. Fisher keeps dropping books on the table loud enough to wake the dead, smiling politely when they all peer up at her, feeling queasy and betrayed.

Ian says, “It was a good party,” meaning more than that.

Mickey says, “Sure,” and turns his whole body away.

***

Ian’s family comes to visit for Homecoming, on one of the allotted family visiting days, and Fiona is the first to see him when they walk in the front door of the hall, her face erupting into a grin, her arms opening wide. It’s good to see them again, Lip who hugs him tight enough that it almost hurts, Debbie who’s grown a good two inches since he saw her last, Carl already looking around for things to steal, and baby Liam pressing wet kisses to his face.

Frank is predictably absent, but Lip has brought his college girlfriend Amanda, who immediately begins to flirt with some of the boys in Ian’s class, laughing behind her hand and curling her hair around the delicate shell of her ear. Lip shrugs when Ian asks, says, “We’re not exclusive,” and shows him the money that Amanda’s parents had given him as an ultimatum to stop seeing their daughter. He even pulls off a few bills from the roll and squeezes them into Ian’s palm, tells him that if he needs anything – “Anything,” he says, and his voice is rough and swollen with warmth – don’t hesitate to call or text or whatever.

Fiona takes them all out to lunch at the nicest restaurant in town, Frank’s business card slipping clean out of her wallet, and lets them get whatever they want, her bright smile and her hand brushing smooth across the back of Ian’s neck. Carl orders three desserts and they all end up sharing, smearing chocolate sauce and crumbs all over their faces, Ian laughing loud and long when Liam sticks an ice cream cold finger up his nose.

When they get back to the school, Ian sees Mickey in the hallway with what must be his sister – same dark hair, same smudged ink-lined shoulders, same mouth, poised in nothing that could be considered a smile – and makes a move to introduce his family, but Mickey sees him coming and grips his sister by the arm, hard, dragging her away.

“Shit,” Ian says loud enough that Lip hears, but never explains what he means.

***

He doesn’t ask Mickey about it the next time he sees him, or the time after that, but somewhere around Halloween Mickey knocks on Ian’s door with a baggie full of pot and rolling papers and Ian lets him in, pushing aside the open textbooks and the half-empty bottle of Stoli Lip had smuggled in for him. Mickey sits on Ian’s bed and starts rolling out a blunt, his fingers light, creased with gravity.

They’re quiet for a moment, calm, basking in the silence until Mickey licks the end of the blunt and flicks open his lighter, setting fire to the tip, taking a deep breath, inhaling the fumes, holding it in his mouth for a moment, his cheeks puffed out comically. “Fuck,” he says, when he exhales, more of a low intone, passing it over to Ian so he can take a drag, too.

Ian does, and then takes another, and then another, until Mickey says, “Whoa there,” his fingers on Ian’s, pulling the blunt from his mouth.

“Sorry,” Ian says, and then, “I just needed that.”

Mickey shrugs. “It’s cool, just not so fast.” He smiles, slow, beautiful, and then leans in to kiss Ian, his mouth soft.

Ian pulls back, and it’s because of the pot that he feels brave enough, that he can say no, but even so his mind is scattered, on fire, and he’s having a hard time remembering why he wants to say no. “This,” he says, and shakes his head, a pitiful hope of clearing it, “I can’t do this. Not when you can’t even look at me when we’re not alone.”

Mickey frowns, the blunt burning down between his fingers, and he says, “What? I thought you liked this.”

Ian pulls at his bottom lip with his teeth. “I was going to introduce you to my family, but you ran away. Why did you run away? I was going to show them that I had a friend. That’s a big deal for me, you know, having a friend.” He pauses, looks up at Mickey with shiny, wet eyes. “We are friends, aren’t we?”

Mickey looks away. “Yeah,” he says, and his voice is rough, raw. “Yes, we’re friends.”

“Then why did you run away?”

Mickey takes another toke, a long, silent one, and then brushes his hand over his face, numb. “My dad was there, I couldn’t,” he stops, starts again, “He can’t find out about this, us, whatever this is. He just can’t.”

And it’s because of his grave tone, because of the way that Mickey looks at him, his eyes dark and scared, that Ian says, “Okay.” That Ian suddenly feels purposeful, feels like he’s clasping something valuable in his hands. “Okay, I won’t tell anyone.”

Mickey takes Ian’s hand, fits it against his, pulls him closer, their fingers lining up. “I like what we’re doing, I like this,” he places a palm on Ian’s thigh, the blunt hanging low at the edge of his mouth, “I like us, but I just want this to be a secret, okay?”

“Okay,” Ian says again, plucking the blunt from Mickey’s mouth and pinching the edge shut, laying it on his nightstand. He slides smooth against Mickey, their bodies aligning, Ian’s mouth hovering over Mickey’s.

He can be a secret.

He’s good at being a secret.

Mickey swallows Ian’s words with enough force to bruise.

***

(Last November, Ian had tried to kill himself.

He still has the scars on his left arm, the scallop-edged hesitation marks, the knife-thin cut from wrist to elbow. After he woke up in the hospital, he had traced the bandage over and over above where Kash’s hands had been, holding the pressure with a wine-stained kitchen towel the night he found him, and Ian had thought that if he had enough strength to peek under the white gauze, there might be bruises there in the shape of Kash’s fingers.

He never looked and – two weeks later when the nurses had taken him off suicide watch – he had watched the doctors peel off the bandage and saw nothing but a red, angry, healing cut.)

***

Winter rolls through the campus like an aching, biting wind, the cold pooling in the cracks of the old foundation, the walls creaking and moaning with the movements of the frost-bitten wood. Classes are still in session even as the first snow falls, the snowflakes dancing across the lawn, clinging to the window ledges, and as Ian exits Abnormal Psychology and enters French, he’s struck by the foot of snow that has built up over the last hour.

Several boys are lined up by the windows, already planning the logistics of this evening’s snowball fight, and Mrs. Fisher – clad in a modest azure sweater, much to the disappointment of the front row – has a hard time catching anyone’s attention for at least several minutes. Mickey leans over to Ian when Ian sits down, his hands cold on Ian’s skin, whispering, “What are you doing later?”

Ian looks around, careful of each gaze, careful that nobody can construe this to be something a little more intimate, something a little more than friendly, and then shrugs. “Nothing, why?”

Mickey smiles, wide and bright, and says, “You’ll see.”

***

What Ian sees is: the pile of wet twigs that Mickey gathers from the forest and lays at the foot of the old gardener’s shed, arranging them from least to most damp, carving out a little well in the snow. He wants to make a fire, even though Ian had told him that it will be hard, with the chill in the air and the blanket of snow on the hard ground, the wet wood that just won’t light, but Mickey just grinned and told him that that was the best part, the utter perseverance of the fire itself to gain life and spread.

And it does come alive beneath Mickey’s hands, his thick, mitten-covered fingers clicking the lighter again and again and again until one of the twigs catches, finally, Mickey leaning down to blow life into the little fire, watch it convulse and then take off. The shed burns slow and warm and Mickey sits next to Ian in the snow, close enough to touch, and just basks in the glow, his face full of light, his wide mouth, his eyes glazed.

Ian had brought the packet of cigarettes that Lip had given him on Thanksgiving, and they light one after another, hunching over the sparks overtaking the shed, their faces deliciously close. Mickey finds an old bottle of Jack in his backpack, something foul-tasting but warm, and they pass that around, too, first Mickey and then Ian and then Mickey again.

The story goes: Mickey has been interested in fire since he was four years old, playing with his father’s little books of bar matches, pulling one out of the pack, striking it, watching it burn all the way down. He watched fires and then he graduated to starting fires and it’s not like he doesn’t have control over it, but it has gotten him in trouble (case in point: the gym of his old school) over the years, so he’s learned to tamp it down, stomp on it, pack it away inside of himself. He sets them when he lets himself, which isn’t often, but is almost entirely made up of meaning, and he tells Ian that the first night that they slept together, he had gone into the boy’s bathroom afterwards and fed a whole notebook to his lighter, pressing the tip to each torn page before watching them curl up and disintegrate into nothing in the bowl of the sink.

It’s significant, this, them, significant enough that Mickey has set this fire for Ian, to sit beside him and watch him watch it, let the warmth fill both of them up, the heat pressing sticky close to their faces. He watches Ian watch it and Ian catches him doing it and smiles shyly, softly, ducking his head when he feels his face start to grow pink.

It’s significant, and yet neither of them have any words.

Mickey licks Ian’s bottom lip once, craving his taste, and Ian lifts a gloved hand to cradle Mickey’s face, pull him closer, and they kiss and kiss and the shed burns down around them.

***

Christmas break is gone before they know it and Ian comes back with the sort of pit in his stomach that has a habit of never going away. He unpacks the bag of clothes that he had taken to Chicago with him and feels his movements as if they are foreign to him, lifting the shirts out and hanging them in the closet robotically, unable to feel, unable to think, as if a thin veil of fog has moved over his mind.

He had been manic over Christmas, cleaning and cooking and decorating with a relish that Fiona had been jealous of, making her laugh as he sang carols off tune, pushing the furniture across the floor and dancing with Debbie in the created space, baking cookies with Liam, letting him eat half of the uncooked dough before they were through, licking the spoon zealously. He had called Mickey nine times over the break, never managing to get him on the line, but leaving message after message, telling him about his day, his week, what he’s been thinking of, who he has been wanting to see, to touch again.

Lip had taken him out to a particularly disreputable bar to get drunk and Ian had ended up having sex with a boy in the bathroom, up against the stall door, grunting and panting and rutting, calling out Mickey’s name when he came. The boy had given him his phone number and Ian had thrown it away after he left, crumbling up the paper and tossing it in the trash, feeling sore and used and completely ashamed with himself. When Lip had asked him what took him so long, raising his eyebrows at the blooming hickey on Ian’s neck, Ian had lied and looked away.

Back at school, Ian is mechanical, going through the movements with little feeling, watching himself go to classes and complete homework assignments and study for tests, watching himself pretend to feel when Mickey speaks to him, when Mickey touches him, when they kiss and fuck and sleep together afterwards. Ian thinks he’s supposed to feel something, supposed to feel like he loves and is maybe loved back, but mostly it’s just nothing, a void where there shouldn’t be one.

It’s starting to feel like last year, like last November all over again, and he scares himself with how much he doesn’t care. It’s there, this little shard of glass that lives inside of him, cold and sharp and pulsing, and if he’s not careful he will cut himself from the inside out, slice himself into pieces.

If he’s not careful, he will kill himself.

Mickey looks at him one night in the quiet hum of the darkness, when they’re both in bed and spent, Ian placing his mouth on Mickey’s shoulder as a way of never really moving away, never really letting him go, and Mickey looks at him and keeps looking at him before he finally says, “I think I love you.”

And this is where Ian starts to cry, this thing inside of him that doesn’t feel, that only feels frozen and numb and quiet, the silent tears that roll down his cheeks, his hushed breathing, as he says, “You shouldn’t.”

***

That night, Mickey asks again why Ian came to Bellingham, his voice small in the space between them, his voice rough, ghostly.

Ian turns away, pressing his face against the pillow, his eyes wet, his tongue swollen in his mouth, and – with one, long inhale – he lets the words spill out.

***

(The story goes: Ian had been seduced by his math teacher.

It was little things at first, notes on his homework, a shared cigarette after class, a ride to school here and there, with a few stops on desolate roads along the way, Kash turning to Ian in the front seat and placing a warm hand on his clothed thigh, telling him that he really was the brightest student he had ever had, that he was something special, that he really would go places one day, Kash smiling wide and deep and beautifully.

Then things progressed into stolen kisses in the teacher’s lounge, when they were both supposed to be in class, Kash sneaking him in and pressing his lips small and soft on Ian’s, his wide palms engulfing Ian’s face. And then it was hanging out after school, Kash making excuses to get close, failing him on purpose so he would have to stay behind and catch up, Kash sitting next to him with his hands almost but not quite touching Ian’s arm, his breath tickling the expanse of Ian’s neck. And then it was sex in Kash’s car, after school in the middle of the parking lot, before the street lights turned on for the night, Kash’s arcing back and Ian’s white hands making indentations and marks and moving fluidly around him.

It was nice and even more so it was exhilarating, sneaking around and keeping secrets and knowing something that nobody else could see when they looked at Ian and looked at Kash and saw them together as only teacher and student. It was what Ian had wanted ever since he realized that he was gay, someone to love and be loved by, someone that was his whole world.

It didn’t last long, though, because Lip had taken one look at Ian and knew, just knew, that something was going on. He had promised to kill Kash if they continued, called him a baby rapist, called him a pervert, called him all sort of names and had told them both that if Kash laid another hand on Ian, he would personally beat him to death.

So they stopped.

For a while, anyway.

It was too hard for Ian to sit in Math and not remember what Kash’s hands felt like on him, not remember what it was like to kiss him and to feel him kiss back, not remember what it was like when they touched and loved and enveloped each other, Ian pressed tight against Kash’s back, Kash reaching up and placing a hand on the nape of Ian’s neck, his palm tickling the few wisps of hair there. He knew it was hard for Kash, too, because Kash never looked at him anymore, never called on him in class, never said his name. They were a few aborted attempts to speak to him, a few times that Ian had tried to ask him a question about math or catch him in the crowded hallway just to say hi, but each time Kash had turned away with this shameful look, his mouth a straight line across his face, his hands tightly wound together.

Ian had gone from teacher’s pet to invisible, to nothing, and he blamed Lip and he blamed himself.

It wasn’t until the summer that they started again, Ian showing up at Kash’s house just to get attention, introducing himself to Kash’s wife and kids, smiling dangerously when Linda asked him why Kash was his favorite teacher, saying something obtuse, lying between his teeth. Kash had gripped his arm hard when Linda got up to grab more cookies and lemonade from the kitchen and had asked him why he was doing this, his whisper furious and stilted in the room, and Ian had looked up at him innocently and told him that he had to see him, that he didn’t care what Lip would do, that he loved Kash more than anyone in the world.

Kash had dropped his arm as if he was on fire, looking hurt, looking devastated. “Fuck,” he had said, and then made excuses to Linda that he would be back later, but first he had to drive Ian home.

They had fucked in the car then, pulled off on a side road somewhere near the L, and Kash had panted into Ian’s skin that he had loved him, too, that he had always loved him, that he always would. Ian had cried, had smiled and cried, pulling Kash up to him, staying like that for as long as Kash let him, the low rumble of the train’s engine vibrating beneath them.

Lip had found out in November.

He didn’t kill Kash, but he did call the police, had given them names and dates and times and pictures from Ian’s cellphone, candid pictures, ones Ian had never shown anyone. Kash was picked up the next day, released with bail the day after that, and Ian had sneaked out from under the watchful eye of Lip and Fiona and gone to Kash’s own house, void of Linda and the kids and the clothes and toys that came with them, and had started to cry, started to persuade him into running away with him, had looked at Kash’s face and the utter disgust there, the utter revulsion, and had recognized that all of this was his fault, that he had turned the best thing in his life against him, and he had sat down on the floor of Kash’s kitchen right there and slit his wrist with a kitchen knife.

He had said, “I don’t want to live if I can’t be with you,” and – between Kash grabbing a towel from the handle of the oven and pressing it whisper close to Ian’s wrist, between the bloody, half-screamed call to 911, between the frantic curses and pleas to God – Kash had told him that Ian was the worst fucking mistake that he had ever made.)

***

Ian self-medicates, swallowing handfuls of differently colored pills at a time, sometimes downers, sometimes uppers, can’t stand to have the same mood for longer than a day. He steals pills from Mickey’s stash, although that’s usually only Ritalin, which Mickey has been selling to some of the boys during exam weeks, and he takes what some of his classmates give him, whatever gets fed to him with bottles of water and maybe some long, languid kisses, during parties or not, whatever, who cares.

He fucks around, or gets fucked around, he’s not sure which because it’s all kind of hazy and hard to pin down, a boy from his history class taking him by the hand and leading him to the senior bathrooms on the fourth floor, locking the door behind them and pressing Ian into the corner of the first stall. He’s kind of numb, but he moans in all the right places, saying his name – the right name – when the boy slides his hand down Ian’s stomach, when he kisses the nape of Ian’s neck.

There’s also a sophomore, who acts shy and almost scared, lets Ian touch him anywhere, lets Ian take control. It’s his first time, he keeps saying, his first time for any of this, and Ian promises to be gentle, but isn’t, lights a cigarette afterwards and gives it to the boy to try, another first that he doesn’t like.

He still fucks Mickey, of course, but less than he did before, mostly because Mickey has been noticing his change in habits, has noticed his blank looks, and also mostly because Mickey had looked at the scar on Ian’s wrist and didn’t say a word, his thumb tracing the raised line over and over and over again until Ian had asked him to leave. Mickey keeps asking him what’s wrong, why he’s doing these things, and Ian keeps saying he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know, even if he does, even if he’s known for a long time, even if he doesn’t care what’s happening and even if he doesn’t really want it to stop.

Mickey keeps asking, “Are you okay?”

And Ian keeps replying, “Not really.”

***

Frank stops by on the Wednesday before Easter to take Ian out of school, let him play hooky. They drive around for a bit, Frank hunched over the steering wheel and mumbling past the cigarette dangling from his bottom lip, asking him where all the good bars are.

“I don’t know,” Ian says, “I’m underage. Also, it’s like eight o’clock in the morning.”

“Well, that’s no excuse,” Frank says and drives into the parking lot of the nearest McDonalds.

Frank buys a cup of coffee, pushing eggs and bacon and pancakes on Ian, and then not-so-discreetly opens the lid of his Styrofoam cup and pours a few fingers of Jim Beam into it. They sit in silence for a bit, Ian chewing without tasting the food, Frank nursing his current hangover, before Frank says, bluntly, gruffly, “They’ve sentenced Mr. Karib to three years in prison.”

Ian swallows slowly, and the food feels like concrete sliding down his throat.

Franks sighs, “I know it doesn’t sound like much, but it’s at least something. The lawyers promised me that he’ll have to sign up with the sex offender’s registry once he’s out, too, so he’ll be branded for life.” He moves his hand, pats Ian’s once and then twice, and then slides his own back across the table. “I thought this might make you feel better. Kev told me that you’ve been feeling a bit low lately.”

Ian swallows again, trying to stop the tears that have started to well up in his eyes. “It’s, uh,” he says and then coughs, his voice like gravel, “It’s nothing.”

Frank drinks from his coffee cup, the alcohol tinging his cheeks pink. “There’s probably someone you can talk to in that school. We certainly pay enough for it, there’s got to be a shrink in there or something.”

“Maybe,” Ian says, and then looks down at his half-eaten eggs.

“Or you could talk to Kev. I mean, I know he’s your headmaster and all, but he’s a pretty decent guy. Used to drink like a fish.” Frank looks wistful for a moment, away from Ian and into some distant memory. “The day he went to AA was the day he stopped being so fun. That’s why you’ll never catch me in one of those programs. You’ll have to kill me first.” He laughs, and Ian smiles with only half of his mouth.

“Don’t let your eggs get cold,” Frank says, and Ian feels the bile to start to rise in his throat, so he stands up quickly, the chair clattering back, the sound loud in the deserted restaurant.

He almost doesn’t make it to the bathroom before he throws up, the partially digested breakfast spilling across the black and white tiles of the floor.

***

Dr. Jackson wears reading glasses that envelop her face. She holds them out to the farthest point of her nose to read Ian’s file, fingering the ornate frames before letting them hang on the chain around her neck, collapsing back into the chair, smiling wide at him. She is the only certified psychologist that Bellingham employs, part-time Psychology teacher and part-time school counsellor, and Ian had looked up her credentials online and been unimpressed with the findings: a questionable doctorate from an online university and less time spent in residency than Liam’s been alive.

“Well,” she says, “Why are you here, then?”

Ian shrugs and then thinks better of it and says, “I thought you would know,” and then thinks better of that and says, “My ex-boyfriend is going to prison.”

Dr. Jackson nods once, a sympathetic expression on her face, humming under her breath, before pulling out one of the drawers of her desk. “Most of the kids that come in here come in here for prescriptions,” she says, pulling out a few dozen sample packs and a thick prescription pad. She shuffles through the packs, picking out a few. “Do you want some of these? I’ve got Adderall, Zoloft, Lexapro, you name it.”

Ian looks at the drugs and then looks back up at her. “I thought,” he starts, and then stops, and then starts again, his eyes feeling heavier, feeling wet. “I thought we could maybe just talk or something?”

“Oh, sure,” Dr. Jackson says, her voice loud in the room. She pushes the pills aside and claps her hands once, her mouth stretching across her face. “Absolutely, I would love to talk to you. What do you want to talk about?”

Ian can’t find his tongue for a moment, can’t form any words, and he’s about to give up, to leave, to tell her the he just can’t do any of this anymore, when it all comes spilling out: Kash and how he made Ian feel, why they started, why they had to stop, why they had to start again, why he was arrested, what happened last November, and even now, this school, the drugs, the sex, and – Jesus – just Mickey, everything about Mickey and why he wants to be with Mickey and why he thinks he shouldn’t be with Mickey and why he thinks that Mickey deserves better than him.

Dr. Jackson sits in her chair and nods at the right times, makes the appropriate gestures, the appropriate hums of agreement or sympathy, but never says a word. She takes little notes, never interrupts him, only sits there with her hands clasped together on top of her notebook, on top of Ian’s file, looking at him as if she’s really interested in what he has to say.

He says, “My mom was bipolar.”

He says, “It tore my family apart.”

He says, “I think I might be bipolar, too.”

And she looks at him with her bright eyes, her soft face, and she leans forward and lays a palm on his knee and says, “I can help you.”

***

(And the best part is: he wants to be helped.

He wants Dr. Jackson to fix him, and he knows that there’s no cure or anything, but he wants her to help him find a way to survive this. He wants to start over, he wants to move away from the looks that Fiona gives him sometimes, the extra careful way Lip handles him, delicately, like a flower, he wants to move away from the stigmatism of being the crazy one, he wants to move away from always being unstable.

He wants to love and be loved in return and he wants to know that it’s because he chose this, because he’s the one in control.)

***

Mickey texts him the day after Easter, asks him to meet him by what’s left of the gardener’s shed.

Ian stands there blowing warm air into his hands, having forgotten his gloves somewhere in the mess of his room, or maybe back in Chicago, before Frank had dropped him back off at school with a bag full of prescription pills and an awkward, one-handed hug that Ian regretted letting Frank initiate. Frank had given him a bottle of Jack – “One last one for the road,” he had said, because Fiona had already warned him against it, worried about Ian possibly mixing the alcohol with his medication, but Frank had rolled his eyes and pressed it into Ian’s hand, anyway – and didn’t say goodbye, but did say that he would see again in a couple of months, that he hoped Ian made it to the last day of school.

He waits a while and feels foolish and thinks about leaving until Mickey finally appears over the hill, careful of the white patches of snow still covering the ground. “Hey,” Mickey says when he reaches Ian and leans in for a kiss, stealing warmth from Ian’s mouth.

“Hey,” Ian says, and feels numb, from the cold and the pills and the nagging feeling in the back of his mind.

“I missed you,” Mickey says, but Ian doesn’t say it back.

“Mickey,” he says, and his voice is hushed, forlorn. “I don’t think we should see each other anymore.”

Mickey looks at him for a moment and then looks down at his tattoo-covered knuckles, the rough skin there, the ragged and red bruises that meant that Mickey must have gotten into another fight at home again, and then Mickey looks back up at Ian. “What?” he says, and also, “Why?”

Ian had prepared this, had stood in front of the bathroom mirror at home and rehearsed what he was going to say, not the truth, never the truth, but something almost close to it, or something that could be the truth, if Ian was a different person, if Ian was a good person. He thinks of those words and he thinks of how he will say them and then he says, “Fuck,” and closes his eyes.

Mickey doesn’t touch him, but he wants to.

“I have this thing,” Ian says, and he feels the tears start to well up and start to roll down his cheeks, the wet spots stinging from the bite of the cold wind. “I have this thing inside of me.” He watches Mickey watch him and he takes a deep breath, lets it out, the ache in his chest palpable.

“My mom had it, too. She,” he pauses, “She killed herself the year after my little brother was born. She was taking a lot of medication, I mean a lot, and she swallowed almost an entire bottle before we found her.”

Mickey coughs once and then swallows, his eyes bright. “Jesus,” he says, and his voice is rough.

“I don’t really want to end up like her,” Ian says, and then closes his eyes again. “There was a time when I did, I really did, with Kash and everything, but I can’t stand the thought of leaving everyone behind. My sisters, my brothers, fuck even Frank.” And here he looks at Mickey again, cataloguing the way Mickey moves his hand to him and then takes it back, an aborted gesture, cataloguing the way that Mickey bites his lip hard enough that it starts to bleed. “I can’t stand the thought of leaving you behind. I don’t want anyone to have to find me; I don’t want anyone to have to clean up the mess.”

He takes another deep breath. “I want to live.”

“Fuck,” Mickey says again, and then surges forward, and they’re kissing, pulling and pushing, grappling with each other’s tongues, Mickey trying to take some of Ian’s clothes off so he can feel skin, can feel the warmth of him, can feel his heart beating, his blood pulsing, his breath against his.

Ian gives in for a moment, just one, and then pushes back, his hand on Mickey’s chest, his hand weak, his voice weak, “No,” and Mickey stops. “I can’t,” he says, and his voice is faltering, his voice giving out. “I can’t do this again.”

“You’re not,” Mickey says, and his hands are on fire against Ian’s skin, on fire and hotter than anything Ian has felt in his entire life. “You’re not, because I am not him. I don’t want to use you, Ian, I want to be with you.”

Ian shakes his head, but doesn’t move away. His mouth is a set line, grim against his reddened face, and both of their breath are white in the air around them, exploding from their mouths and curling together like twin clouds, up and up and up into the sky. “I can’t be someone’s secret anymore, Mickey. I can’t hide from what I want.”

Mickey looks at him, really looks at him, and there are tears in his eyes when he says, “Okay.”

Ian stills, his heart slowing in his chest, his mouth open. “Okay?”

And Mickey nods and says, “Okay.”

***

They grow.

They love.

They live. 


End file.
